Comanechi - 'You Owe Me Nothing But Love'

8 / 10
Remember that mini grunge revival a couple of years back? The shit one? Well if the scene quickly withered and died, no-one told Comanechi. And thank Kurt for that. The problem with Comanechi’s peers is that they never quite captured the dark spirit of ’80s grunge, a time when the mainstream was the mainstream and the underground was a bastion of fucked-up outsiderdom. But these Londoners – stark, violent and quite demented – are pure Seattle ’89, nailing all of grunge’s punk snottiness, wasted mischief-making and children-of-divorce emotional damage. Guitarist Simon Petrovitch is a riff-making force of nature, but the ace in the hole is frontwoman Akiko Matsuura, a kind of Karen O figure if Karen O was a pill-popping riot grrrl with a penchant for causing maximum offence. “My brother fucked me”, she wails on ‘Mad’. “He’s a model”. Who said punk was dead? John Calvert